Blog

For those who have been through breast cancer and lost a breast, getting a breast tattoo can be a very meaningful and emotional experience.

Many women are unaware of how much of their femininity they associate with their breasts until they lose one.  Without their breast, they feel like less of a woman, unsure of how they are perceived by others and even by themselves.  Are they still feminine and womanly with a flat chest?  The disease of cancer has taken away part of their body and with it some of their identity.  It's a cruel outcome that many women struggle with after they have won their battle with cancer.

Tattoo artists have been able to help these women to regain some of their identity, either through the addition of beautiful feminine artwork over the scar of the missing breast, or through cosmetic tattooing where a nipple is drawn back in where it would have been on the chest.

If you are looking to have a nipple to be tattooed back in, this is a job for a cosmetic tattoo artists.  Cosmetic tattooing falls under different laws and licenses than traditional tattooing, and so you will need to research doctors or the occasional tattoo artist who also holds a cosmetic tattoo license.  The equipment used in this procedure is different from a traditional tattoo machine, and is typically smaller, one-use, and uses smaller needle sets.  The procedure may be covered under your health insurance as part of reconstructive surgery, so speak with your insurance provider and your cosmetic tattooist to find out if there can be help with payment towards the tattoo.

If you opt for an image rather than cosmetically replicating your breast, you can find imagery meaningful to you that represents your own ideas about yourself.  Some women choose to place a pink ribbon as a badge of courage and success over their breast.  Others flow vines and flowers over the chest, a symbol of beauty and femininity.

Ultimately, the choice to get a breast tattoo is very personal and significant to the client, and so care should be taken to speak with an artist or multiple artists to find one who can help manifest your vision.

Breast tattoos can help you reclaim your body, celebrate victory over the struggle with breast cancer, and provide a vision of joy where there used to be pain.  If you have gotten a breast tattoo or breast cancer tattoo, please share your experiences with us.  We'd love to know how to better serve your needs and desires from both an artist perspective, and from a serving point of view to help make the process more comfortable for our clients.

Stomach Tattoos have a reputation for boldness.  People get words, family names and banners tattooed across their stomachs, declaring their family history and stance toward the world.  Women often get tattoos around their belly buttons; delicate designs to accent their femininity. 

The stomach tattoo can look great on a fit body, or one that doesn't change very much in weight over time.  But, due to the many minute fluctuations in weight almost everyone experiences, a stomach tattoo should be carefully considered before putting needle to skin.

In general, I would recommend men getting a stomach tattoo over women doing so.    Pregnancy is a consideration for a woman getting  stomach tattoo, because this will cause a great deal of stretching and distortion to the piece.  But, even if she does not gain weight, because women tend to pick such delicate designs that the tattoo tends to blur out over time and look less feminine.

As it loses its shape, a delicate flower around the bellybutton can become a strange target shape or loop.  A body piercing might be a better accent than a bellybutton tattoo.

For men going for a lettering tattoo on the stomach, consider the shape of the stomach and arch your letters or banner to flow over or under the belly button.  Keep in mind the natural lines of the rib cage under the skin and the pelvic bones, and use these as guidelines in placement.

Keep a stomach tattoo design bold and simple so that it is easily understood from a distance.  Stay away from lines that are too close together, as these will blur together in time, usually much faster than tattoos in other locations on the body.

By keeping your lettering or other tattoo design simple and clear, you can have an excellent stomach tattoo experience.  During the process, breathe slowly and steadily so that the tattoo artist can execute the design easier.  This will also help mitigate the pain of getting tattooed.  Holding your breath may be needed in some locations for a brief moment, but your tattoo artist will tell you when and if this is necessary.

Hip tattoos have some of the same concerns as stomach tattoos, but are a much less stretchy area of the body to work with.  If you have concerns about tattooing over your stomach, consider getting a hip tattoo design instead.

I am not sure if there is a more badass place to get a tattoo than in your armpit.  Maybe directly on the front of the neck.  But that's about it, as far as painful areas in which to get stellar body art.

A tattoo in the armpit will require some pain endurance.  My own experience of being tattooed near and somewhat in the armpit has been interesting.  Leading up to the edge of the pit was very painful with a sharp kind of cutting sensation, but as we got closer to the armpit, the sensation dulled.  I have not had a tattoo placed directly into my armpit, but I suspect that it would be an intense experience.

The skin of the armpit welts very quickly, making highly detailed lines difficult to execute there.  Bright colors will work, but I imagine that there may be multiple sessions needed to really even out all the ink, since the swelling of the skin may make it difficult to know if the tattoo is entirely filled solidly during the first pass.

Because your some of your lymph nodes are located in the armpits, this may be an area you wish to avoid tattooing.  While I have not heard of anyone ever developing cancer directly or indirectly as a result of tattooing, the deposit of tattoo ink into the lymph nodes is currently being researched by the FDA.

I am not a doctor, so I do not have any certifiable authority to pronounce that tattoos are completely safe on all areas of the body.  However, my opinion is that the exposure to tattoo inks is so brief as to not hold the risks associated with long-term exposure to any of the materials found in them.  Also, while processing any wound, materials will pass through your lymph nodes to be expelled from the body.  This is part of the natural process of healing, and as far as I know, tattoo inks do not collect there to stay forever.  They pass from the body except for the parts encased in the skin.  Within this scar tissue, the tattoo ink is inert and does not interact with the rest of the body's systems.  My thought is that if the tattoo ink is deposited within the skin at the proper depth, there is no need to fear adverse consequences other than perhaps tattoo regret brought on from not thinking your tattoo design through fully, or an allergy to an ingredient in the ink, which you probably would know about before getting tattooed, and therefore would avoid that particular color or product.

Generally, if you are considering getting an armpit tattoo, you probably have a lot of tattoos already and have run out of space - thus filling in even the armpit with beautiful artwork that couldn't fit somewhere else.  Or, you might feel that the armpit is a place where you can hide your tattoo so that nobody will really see it there.

Talk with your tattoo artist to come up with a simple and clear design that will work on this area of skin, and be sure to avoid shaving or waxing your armpit during the healing phase.  With a clear plan, your armpit tattoo can be a beautiful experience rather than a haphazard one.  Good luck!

Arm band tattoos are a very popular tattoo type, especially for first-timers.

These tattoos are often the first tattoos people think of when they imagine getting a tattoo, or picturing someone with a cool tattoo in their head.

Arm band tattoos wrap around the biceps and give the eye a resting point on the arm a few inches below the armpit, or as low down as just above the crook of the elbow.  They are a classic look almost as popular as traditional sailor tattoos that rest on the biceps without wrapping around all the way.

Getting a great arm band tattoo is the result of working with your tattoo artist to make sure it is shaped correctly for your arm.  Of course, you are thinking, "It's a band that wraps around my arm, how hard can that be?"

But, you should consider your overall frame size to make sure that the band is wide enough or thin enough to look good on you in particular.  Thin and slight frames will need a thinner or more wispy arm band.  Muscular and wider arms and bodies will need a thicker band, or the design will look weak or ill-matched to the body.

Consider tribal arm band tattoos if you are looking to accentuate your biceps or want to go with a classic biker style tattoo look.  You can vary this theme by choosing different weight lines, or working with various curve shapes.  Would you prefer pointy, jagged, smooth or wavy?  Maybe you would like the shape to be very straight, with all the details inside of the lines.

Tribal arm band tattoos can be altered to include colors or designs within the tribal shapes.  This can alter the mood of the piece and add more individuality to an otherwise very "normal" tattoo, as far as tattoos go.  You could choose to complete the entire tattoo in color without an outline, but keeping the tribal shapes, or you could outline the tattoo in black and then fill in colors or a scene inside of the shapes.  This often is very striking.

A great option with choosing color in your tribal tattoo to begin with is that you could always fill it in black at a later date.  You will have the option of going darker later on if your tastes change.  If you start with a black tattoo, you cannot make it lighter later on without laser tattoo removal.

Read more: Arm Band Tattoos